Kroger chairman and former CEO David Dillon recently opened up while at the Aspen Ideas Festival panel, keeping it realer than most would by stating that his $12.8 million pay package in 2013 was “ludicrous.”

A giant robot will soon be descending on the city.
Metrobot, the interactive aluminum sculpture by Nam June Paik, once
greeted visitors outside the Contemporary Arts Center’s former space at
Fifth and Walnut streets downtown.

Footage from Beavercreek Walmart shows Crawford "shot on sight," family's attorney says; Cincinnati second most American city; Boehner MIA in West Chester

This week is almost over, and that's a great thing. I haven't had my customary coffee and donut yet this morning, so let's do this news so I can get to that.Security footage from the Beavercreek Walmart where police shot John Crawford III shows that Crawford was not acting violently, an attorney for his family said yesterday in a statement. Attorney Michael Wright says Crawford was facing some shelves and talking on his cellphone when he was fired upon and that police “shot him on sight.” This contradicts officers’ reports. They say Crawford was waiving the pellet gun he had picked up from a shelf at the store and refused to drop it. Reports said, “he looked like he was going to go violently.” Crawford, 22, is one of a number of young black men who have died during incidents with police recently under controversial circumstances. The death of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a few days after Crawford’s death sparked wide-scale unrest in the St. Louis suburb.Activists in Beavercreek and across the country have demanded release of the security footage of Crawford’s shooting, which Attorney General Mike DeWine has refused to release until a grand jury is convened Sept. 3. DeWine says releasing the tapes to the public could bias the jury pool and hinder the ongoing investigation. • There has been talk lately of changing some one-way streets in Over-the-Rhine to two-way, including parts of Main Street. The shift could slow traffic to levels safer for pedestrians and help local businesses, traffic experts say. UrbanCincy has a much more detailed rundown of proposed changes and the history of traffic patterns in OTR here. It’s interesting stuff, especially if you have to drive through the area every day or live there and have to deal with the increased traffic zooming through.• The Hamilton County Board of Elections today announced it will host a “vote check” where county residents can call into a the board to make sure their voter registration is good to go. The phone-bank style call-in session will be held Sept. 23 from 5 to 6 p.m. and on Oct. 6 at the same time. That Oct. 6 date is the last day to register or change your voter registration information in Ohio. Put it on your calendar.• I didn’t know a place in America could be more or less American than any other place in America, but apparently there’s a listicle for a city’s degree of American-ness, and Cincinnati came in second behind Nashville. The report by WalletHub.com, a personal finance website, considered 26 factors in the country’s 366 largest metro areas including age, income, housing, gender and other demographic measures to come to its ranking of places most statistically like America’s overall averages. Indianapolis came in third in the most-American sweepstakes. The southwest dominated the bottom five, with two Texas cities (Brownsville and McAllen) and an Arizona burg (Yuma) hanging out and being all un-American (whatever that means) with the likes of Altoona, Pa. and Boulder, Co. America!• If you spend a lot of time up in West Chester, well, first, sorry about that. That’s unfortunate. But if you are hanging around up there in the land of Ikea and you’re hoping for that rare, elusive, thrilling sighting of House Speaker John Boehner, who reps the area hard in Congress, well, you may as well be looking for a yeti. You won’t see Boehner at the local Red Robin or whatever the heck other fancy, all-you-can-eat-fries restaurants they have up there, shaking hands and kissing babies in his district, because he’s out raising millions for the GOP. Yes, he has a Democratic challenger for his re-election bid, Miami University professor Tom Poetter, but Boehner’s not sweating him too much. His campaign has raised more than $2 million to Poetter’s $60,000, and Boehner’s coasted to re-election easily in the past. Instead, Boehner is wooing party donors in Wyoming (the state, not the neighborhood) resort towns and shoring up his power base with fellow establishment GOPers, hustling hard to keep his seat as speaker as he fights off attacks from his right. • Finally — cheer up! The economy is getting better. For someone. Somewhere. Economic growth was better than expected in the last quarter, according to the Department of Commerce. Despite this, more Americans are anxious about the state of the economy now than during the Great Recession, a new Rutgers University poll reports. Some of this has to do with the fact that the average worker still hasn’t recovered fully financially from the economic downturn, wages have remained stagnant even as unemployment has decreased and perceptions of job security are lower than ever, even as Wall Street rebounds and corporate profits have soared.

You wouldn’t know it now to look at the
so-fresh-and-so-clean-clean landscape where Timothy Thomas died and potentially
thousands rioted, faced down cops in riot gear and incurred bean bag
spray, rubber bullets, mace and mayhem, but we were once a bigger, more
metropolitan version of Ferguson, Missouri, and our nighttime streets
ran thick with anger, too.

This is big news for Cincinnati tourism — a sign that the city's ongoing revival is attracting national interest.Road Scholar, the big tour company that plans excursions around the world — from Cuba to Cambodia — has just added Cincinnati to its Signature (American) Cities offerings. The first trip will be March 29-April 3, 2015, and is being advertised as a visit to "the first truly American major city — founded after the Revolutionary War by American-born settlers."Here's the description from the brand-new (just released today) North American Preview catalog:"Historians admire it as the first truly American major city — established after the Revolution by American-born founders. Art and culture lovers revere it for its galleries and performing-arts venues. Now it’s your turn to fall in love with Cincinnati, where laid-back Midwest charm meets artsy big-city sophistication on the banks of the Ohio River. Join local experts at museums and landmarks that interpret the many hats Cincinnati has worn, from America’s original boomtown to waypoint on the Underground Railroad. Admire Art Deco architecture and horticultural artistry unrivaled in the nation. Learn about the city from a unique perspective aboard a riverboat on the Ohio River. Go backstage at the home of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, enjoy the vitality of downtown right outside your hotel and much more."A big part of the trip will be an exploration of Over-the-Rhine.Prices start at $1,075 and include five nights of accommodation, 13 meals, three expert-led lectures and 10 field trips. Cleveland already has been a Signature City. Road Scholar also is expanding the program to Indianapolis. Additionally, it will have an American Queen riverboat excursion from St. Louis to Louisville along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. This year, Road Scholar had an American Queen excursion that stopped in Cincinnati.Road Scholar will also have a new "Silver Screen Cinematic Voyage" excursion on the American Queen from Cincinnati to St. Louis starting on July 11. It will visit sites associated with the filming of movies, such as In the Heat of the Night, which was filmed in Sparta, Ill.For more information, visit roadscholar.org.

Sarah Palin has found another way to make money off her
status as a celebrity political commentator, with her new online Sarah
Palin Channel. For $10 a month, subscribers can get news delivered by
Palin that “cuts through the media’s politically correct filter,” along
with a dose of the Palin household’s “real-life” “outdoor adventures.”